NewsNation Chief Washington Anchor and On Balance host Leland Vittert was a foreign correspondent for four years in Jerusalem. He gives you an early look at tonight’s 7 p.m. ET show. 

One and the Same 

President Joe Biden’s “Noun, Verb, Jan. 6” campaign kicked off at Valley Forge a day before the anniversary of Jan. 6. 

• Biden’s speech echoed his campaign ad we showed you yesterday: He and he alone, with your vote, can save the republic from the evil forces of Donald Trump. 
• While Biden frames himself as the protector of democracy against an autocratic Trump, our friend George Will writes that like the man Biden professes to save democracy from, Biden too abuses the Constitution’s original separation of powers and constraints on executive power.
  • Will’s Washington Post column outlines Biden’s quieter but equally questionable actions.
    • “They (e.g., the eviction moratorium, the vaccine mandate, the cancellation of student debt), and judicial reprimands of them, have been frequent. Now, consider the lack of attention to his contempt for the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, and the Senate majority’s supine complicity.”

Thought bubble: Democrats plan to save the republic, but the best they can do is Joe Biden? In other words, saving democracy isn’t worth replacing him on the ticket with someone who polls better? Hat tip to The Economist for its intellectual clarity.  

Watch tonight: George Will will discuss America’s choice between two old men equally obsessed with power who won’t go away. 

Economy Gut Punch

NewsNation’s Steven Joachim distilled why so many feel so angry about the economy after today’s jobs numbers came out: “Perhaps no better sign to determine how much of a struggle the economy can be — 5.08 million held multiple jobs as of December — that’s the most on record (since 1994). That’s 600,000 more than pre-Covid.”

Thought bubble: Almost always, if someone is working two jobs, it is a necessity, not a choice. It’s very difficult to feel good about the economy when, to paraphrase Joe Biden’s father, you don’t have any “breathing room.” 

Remember: As Clare Ansberry (@clare_ansberry) reported for the Wall Street Journal in November, “Housing Costs Are So High That Divorced Couples Are Still Living Together.”

• Imagine: Working two jobs and still living with your ex. No wonder people are angry. 

Zoom out: One of the smartest men I know says you always worry about the wrong thing. 

• As the stock market ran up to the end of 2023 (ending up 24%), Neil Irwin (@Neil_Irwin) of Axios wrote: “The 2024 economy could be shockingly normal”
  • Be smart: Nobody this time last year predicted stocks up, much less up 24%; by that logic, the prediction of “normal” should be terrifying.
    • And if the first week of 2024 is any prediction — buckle up! The markets are set to close on a losing week. 

It will get worse: Alex Griffing (@AlexGriffing) of Mediaite reports, “Charlie Sykes Ominously Predicts 2024 Will Be ‘Wilder’ Than 1968: ‘Going To Be So Many Black Swan Events’” 

• Fun fact: We compared this election to 1968 back in September. 

Watch tonight: Trish Regan (@trish_regan) will join us to discuss all the things that could go wrong with the prediction of a normal 2024 both economically and otherwise. 

Can New Gun Laws Save 300,000 Lives?

CNN breathlessly reported a new “study” by a gun control advocacy group claiming new gun laws could save 300,000 lives in the next decade. We’ll break down the data tonight with a statistics professor, but at first blush, CNN’s hype leaves out two key facts:

1. Many of the cities with the worst gun violence don’t enforce the gun laws they already have. New laws won’t fix that. 
2. Criminals historically don’t obey the law anyway. 
3. The socioeconomic issues and demographics of states aren’t homogeneous across the country. 

Iowa School Shooting Disappears 

If the network morning shows mentioned yesterday’s Perry, Iowa, school shooting, it was likely only briefly and to note police “don’t know” the motive of the 17-year-old shooter, Dylan Butler. The Des Moines Register reports the suspect posted on TikTok just before the shooting. 

Thought bubble: Police may not know the exact motive or they may be keeping it quiet (like with the Nashville and Colorado Springs shooters), but we know what it wasn’t: Butler wasn’t a white supremacist, MAGA-inspired nut or even from a MAGA-supporting household. We know this because by tonight, the shooting will disappear from the national headlines. We know this because most of the media isn’t breathlessly reporting the details of his parents’ social media. 

We have not heard calls for a “conversation” on gun control or demands to ban assault weapons. There are no flags at half-staff, no Democratic politicians running to CNN. Notably, the president hasn’t talked, and there are no discussions about the dangers of extremist language.

Hope Isn’t a Hostage Policy

Day by day, the chance of the (at least) six Americans held by Hamas returning alive goes down. Understandably, the families feel forgotten. Coverage of Gaza barely makes it into evening newscasts anymore, and if it does, it’s about the Palestinians, not the hostages.

• The White House that pushed so hard for a hostage “deal” early in the Israel-Hamas war rarely talks about them now. When asked about it yesterday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby responded, “We are not gonna stop hoping.”
• Hope isn’t a policy and certainly not a policy of effect when dealing with a murderous terrorist organization. If hope is the best you can do, why not say, “We’ve given up and you should too.” 

Watch tonight: The parents of Sagui Dekel-Chen, an American hostage held by Hamas. They will talk about life without their son and what it’s like watching TV without seeing anything about him. 

Plus: Our own intrepid Robert Sherman will report from Israel’s north tonight where residents say that “it’s time to hit them before they hit us.” His interviews track with yesterday’s note about Israel wanting to provoke a war with Hezbollah. 

How Long Can Bill Clinton Stay in Mexico?

Vanity Fair denies former President Bill Clinton barged into their offices and threatened them over a Jeffrey Epstein exposé. 

• According to reporting from the New York Post: “It’s unclear where Giuffre learned of the alleged threats, and former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter told the Telegraph Thursday: ‘This categorically did not happen.’” 

According to Colby Hall at Mediaite, Vicky Ward, a former Vanity Fair writer, went on CNN and responded to this report saying that it was Epstein who barged in instead. 

In the meantime, Clinton is hanging out in Mexico. So far nothing in the new Epstein documents requires a meaningful statement from the former president. 

That isn’t the case for Prince Andrew, who the new documents allege participated in an underage orgy.

• The Daily Mail’s coverage notes that despite all the allegations including child sexual assault, Prince Andrew keeps his royal title. However, the question is for how long that will remain true and why he appears immune from American prosecution.

Follow the money: The documents and their many unsubstantiated allegations all leave a very big question that we will attempt to answer tonight: How did Epstein make his money? 

The Metro UK asks the same thing in an article from Craig Munro (@crunro), and the truth is nobody really knows how Epstein amassed half a billion dollars before his death.

• His former lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, told us a few months ago he suspected Epstein had sexual blackmail and may have used it to “convince” the rich and famous to put money under Epstein’s management from which Epstein would take a cut.
  • Dershowitz: “I think he had some extortion over some people. I think some people may have come to him, not for his great financial advice … and I suspect there were people over whom he had something involving the sex stuff.”

Skin Deep Diversity

NPR dropped a long feature celebrating how “MIT, Yale, and other elite colleges are finally reaching out to rural students.”

The piece by Elissa Nadworny (@ElissaNadworny) and Jon Marcus details the trek of colleges to small towns like Crossville, Tennessee, to look for students: 

“Sixteen colleges and universities in all — also including Brown, the California Institute of Technology, Columbia, Northwestern, and the University of Southern California — have signed on to STARS and have agreed to visit rural high schools in exchange for financial help with travel costs and staffing.”

Wait – universities with a combined 150-plus billion dollars in endowment want financial help to cover travel costs for diversity?

That shows how skin-deep (literally) big universities’ commitment to diversity is. 

Ground truth: Poor farm kids from Kentucky or South Dakota provide far more diversity to a school like the University of Chicago than a rich Black kid who went to a Northeastern prep school, yet the schools wants grants to recruit the farm kids while spending tens of millions on their DEI programs. 
Money talks: Will donors, like Byron Trott who funds the STARS program, force their alma maters to mean something other than racial diversity rather than just fund a token program.

Tune into “On Balance with Leland Vittert” weeknights at 7/6C on NewsNation. Find your channel here. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of NewsNation.